There are more than two sides to every story in BOTH

Teatro Vista, Chicago’s largest professional Latine theater company, has premiered its first production as part of its new residency at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and they have come out swinging. Artistic Director Wendy Mateo and Executive Director Lorena Diza have taken Teatro Vista’s 35-year history of radical abundance and expanded it into this new residency at Steppenwolf, as well as an explosion of new works spanning multiple mediums and platforms including short films, podcasts, digital novels and video media.  Part of that new production includes several short “prequels” to the play that can be watched on YouTube, which add to and deepen the tone and the world of the story.

BOTH, a new play by Paloma Nozicka and directed by Georgette Verdin is a sly, creepy and thoroughly entertaining take on grief, belonging, human connection, and truth. Don’t let those serious words fool you though, it’s also a ripping good yarn. Nozicka stars as Xochi, a woman staring down several catastrophic changes to her life: she’s pregnant with her boyfriend of only a year, has lost her twin brother Sebastian (Yona Moises Olivares) and is as disappointed in her family as they are in her. In an attempt to heal the family rift, she invites everyone to a private baby shower at her pristine lake house, the site of her brother’s disappearance. It doesn’t go as planned, in part because Sebastian shows up, after having been thought dead for over a year. The play bounces back and forth between two periods in time, both right before and sometime after Sebastian’s disappearance, giving Olivares and Nozicka the opportunity to play their characters at two very distinct stages in their lives.

Seeing Teatro Vista spread out and breathe in the resources that this new residency at Steppenwolf offers was a truly exciting experience. The set of BOTH, designed by Sotirios Livaditis, is a serene vacation home – draped in muted beiges and blues, with warm and inviting textures that make it feel like the audience is somehow looking through the fourth wall and into a private sanctuary. Costume designer Johan H. Gallardo used the same palette for the actors, creating a leisurely, elegant vibe that very clearly told the audience what the characters wanted to be feeling. That is, except for Nozicka’s Xochi, who, despite her blooming pregnancy, is clad in stark black, perhaps symbolizing the devasting truths that the other characters are all hiding from. Or perhaps, she took a page from Chekov’s Masha – she is mourning for her life – darkly funny, given how hugely pregnant she is. The pristine set and costumes juxtapose perfectly with the saturated, vibrant light design by Grano De Oro and the chilling sound design by Satya Chávez. While the set never changes, the light and sound create a cinematic effect, indicating by color which time the story is in – the past is a glowing gold, the transitional trauma is infused with nightmarish blues and reds and the present is a muted echo of both.

Nozicka’s Xochi is a sardonic, intelligent woman who has spent her life insisting on an adherence to the truth as a form of righteousness – after all, it’s been said to set you free. Her family are less committed to that freedom. In fact, the play is in many ways a narrative exploration of the question: Do you want to be happy? Or do you want to be right? This leads to the next question; can you make the ones you love happy by denying your own truth? In a classic “wise fool” moment, it is the steamrolled, well-intentioned Cynthia who suggests that truth can be a thing that we make, if we can only wish it into being hard enough.

The cast is rounded out by domineering, single-minded matriarch Angela, played by Charin Álvarez, who has a warm voice and solid presence that belies a cold, steely resolve to manifest her heart’s desire. Big brother Juan is played by Eddie Martinez with a thin veneer of joviality over an angry, sexist heart with limited imagination. Xochi’s boyfriend and Juan’s best friend Sam, played by Brian King, is yet another man who talks the talk, but loses control of his legs when it’s time to walk the walk. King has the kind of easy charm that makes it especially heartbreaking when he doesn’t deliver the goods. Then there is Angela’s sweet new friend, Cynthia, played by Ayssette Muñoz, whose soft, flowered dress and gentle manner is at odds with the rest of the family’s sharp edges. Finally, Olivares’s Sebastian is almost two people: the fidgety, funny brother, failing at hiding his growing despair, and the still, absent-minded, eerie revenant he seems to have become. It is Sebastian’s presence, or non-presence, that sparks Xochi’s inevitable crash into an impossible decision. She is the only family member who questions where Sebastian has been, the only one that notices strange differences in his knowledge and personal quirks. Her refusal to accept everyone else’s version of events drives the plot towards its unsettling conclusion. I’d love to say more, but to do so would be to give away some of the best parts, because despite the dark subject matter, this show is, in an old-fashioned sense of the word, fun.

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Alina C. Hevia

BOTH can be seen at Steppenwolf 1700 Theater, located at 1700 N. Halsted St.
June 4 – 29, April 11 – May 10. Wednesdays through Saturdays 7:30 p.m.; Sundays 3:00pm.  Wednesdays – Pay-What-You-Will, all other days, $47.

Box Office: www.steppenwolf.org or call 312-335-1650

Email boxoffice@teatrovista.org for tickets

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.